Gravitas Montage Explains It All

Nov 30, 2007

RUSH: Here’s a theory for you. Let me ask you this. Last Wednesday, the day of the debate, what was everybody talking about? Bill Clinton’s flip-flop on Iraq and how he said on two different occasions, he said on Tuesday in Iowa, that he had always opposed the Iraq war. Everybody was out finding the quotes to disapprove that, and then what happens? Then we get this stupid CNN debate Wednesday night. Guess what nobody’s talking about it anymore? They’re not talking about Bill Clinton and his inconsistencies and his lying and his…normalcy, and they’re not talking about Hillary. We’re talking about stupid CNN. Is it a conspiracy? I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. It’s just something to think about, because the Clinton News Network, says, ‘Why, we didn’t plant the brigadier general!’ No, of course, you couldn’t plant the brigadier general — and ‘everybody’ gets BJ’s in the Oval Office, and ‘everybody’ runs around and cheats on their wife with 45 or 50 women. Of course! Everybody does it. Of course, you didn’t plant any of your own questioners at your own appearances, Mrs. Clinton. Oh, no! Of course not. (sigh) It’s just a total, 100% crock. I want to go back. I want to play this montage of ‘gravitas’ I was talking about last hour. This goes back to the year 2000. It’s one of the all-time great montages, this happened within a day of President Bush selecting Dick Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate. You’re going to hear Al Hunt, Juan Williams, Claire Shipman, Steve Roberts, Vic Fazio, Jeff Greenfield, Jonathan Alter, former Senator Bob Kerrey, Margaret Carlson, Mike McCurry, Sam Donaldson, Eleanor Clift, Walter Isaacson, Mark Shields, Judy Woodruff, and Sam Donaldson — and none of these are repeated.

HUNT: He is a man who meets all George W.’s weaknesses: lack of foreign policy experience, lack of gravitas. I think now when Gore is trying to make the case of lack of gravitas against George W. …

WILLIAMS: Now we look and we see the son, who is seeking some gravitas, to say to people that he is an intelligent man…

SHIPMAN: There is a lot talk they are looking at older candidates, candidates with gravitas.

ROBERTS: He’s had health problems, uh, he’s worked for a Big Oil company, but he has the gravitas. You can sum it up in one word: stature.

FAZIO: I really believe that George W. Bush needed that perhaps more than anyone in recent memory because, if there is a rap about him, it may go to the gravitas issue.

GREENFIELD: If the question about Governor Bush was one of the weight, or to use the favorite phrase of the moment, ‘gravitas’…

ALTER: What he gets here is grav-i-tas, a sense of weight, competence, and administrative ability.

KERREY: I’ve gotta strengthen it in some fashion. I’ve gotta bring gravitas to the ticket.

KERREY: He does not need anybody to give him gravitas!

CARLSON: It means that Bush, you know, Gore has experience and gravitas.

McCURRY: I think he also needs to demonstrate some gravitas, too.

DONALDSON: …that he was put on the ticket, but by former President Bush, to give gravitas to the ticket.

CLIFT: Well, Dick Cheney brings congeniality and he brings gravitas.

ISAACSON: He does seem to bring some vigor as well as gravitas and stature to the ticket.

HUNT: It’s called ‘gravitas.’

NOVAK: Right.

SHIELDS A little gravitas!

WOODRUFF: You certainly have gravitas tonight.

DONALDSON: Displayed tonight a certain gravitas.

RUSH: Now, I don’t care. I don’t care how it happens. I don’t care whether they all got together and decided, or one person used it and they all decided to mimic. They are who they are, and that montage is a good illustration.